Chuck's Blog

A Case For IT Optimism

Those of us on the vendor side of the IT business can sometimes despair.  

All the great technology we work so hard to bring to market meets the stark reality of IT organizations unprepared to leverage what the technology can now do.

But, within the gloom, I occasionally get to meet a customer who is reasonably prepared to move forward to the next logical step in their journey.  

And it gives me hope that we as vendors might be doing a few things right after all :-)

I Want My pNFS!

From time to time, various vendors attempt to combine the best of the two most popular storage access models in our industry: block (presumably on FC, iSCSI or FCoE) and file (most always on ethernet/IP).

Historians of our industry can point to many brave but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to combine the inherent simplicity and ease-of-management of NFS with the performance and availability attributes of SAN.

Many of us have been tracking the progress of pNFS in this regard, and it looks like the time is nearing when customers can seriously consider enterprise-class implementations of this converged access model.

The big question in everyone's mind: will it permanently blur the lines between file and block access?

Hitachi's New VSP: Separating The Wheat From The Chaff

Well, we all knew that Hitachi (through HDS and HP) would be announcing some sort of refresh to their high-end storage platform sooner or later.

As EMC is Hitachi's only viable competitor in this part of the market, I think people are expecting me to say something.

Well, rather than get into the weeds, I saw a few aspects of the announcement that made me realize that both companies see the world very differently.

My Friday Rant: Storage As A Commodity

If you're a frequent reader, you know that I use a lot of my customer experiences as fodder for themes in this blog.  Usually, it's about a customer or partner aspiring to do things better.

Well, the world isn't entirely made up of aspirational individuals.  And, as a result, occasionally I get into customer situations where it's a more of a bare-knuckle agenda.

And, since it's Friday, I thought I'd share one of those stories.

Interest In Object Storage Heats Up

One of the benefits of frequent customer interaction is that you get to spot rising -- and sometimes declining -- customer interest in various topics.

Object storage has been around for a while -- a few people understand it, but many don't.  And in the last few weeks, I've found myself getting into an object storage discussion with customers without really intending to.

And the ways we get there are interesting as well ...

EMC And Oracle

As the industry consolidates and standardizes, we as vendors are getting far more comfortable in the new world of co-opetion with other vendors: a nuanced world where we cooperate in some areas, and compete with others.

No longer can various inter-vendor relationships be easily and exclusively categorized as either "friend" or "foe" -- the answer is usually  mix of both, with customers giving as strong input on where we need to cooperate, and where they'll encourage a little friendly competition.

Many of the customers I work with are getting more comfortable in this new landscape as well.  They're learning to look beyond the press releases and brochures to figure out how well various vendors are working together -- or not -- as the case might be.

And I think the relationship between EMC and Oracle is an excellent case study in how these dynamics can result in better outcomes for everyone: customers *and* vendors.

Why EMC Is The #1 Choice For VMware

The data is mounting: more people are turning to EMC for their VMware deployments than anyone else.

Whether it's storage, data protection, security or management --  they're obviously voting with with their dollars, putting EMC in the enviable #1 position in supporting the de-facto standard for virtualization.

While some are still quibbling over the data, others are asking a more pertinent question: why?

So, I thought I'd share with you the 10 reasons I think are driving this strong preference for EMC from IT organizations large and small.

A Cloud Discussion With Dimension Data

Working as I do at EMC, I get the opportunity to work with some of the world's best partners, including Dimension Data.  Recently acquired by NTT, they're in an interesting position to do well as the world shifts from traditional IT to newer models.

I was recently asked to contribute a thought piece for a new customer publication they're creating.  They asked the questions, I gave my best answers. 

Graciously, they allowed me to post the piece here in advance of their publication.  I'll supply a link when it gets published -- the publication shows every sign of being a good and valuable read.

EMC IT Plans IT-As-A-Service

In previous blog posts, I've discussed in some length how EMC's own IT organization is progressing in their journey to the private cloud, running through the phases we're using as a reference model.

Well, progress appears to be a bit ahead of schedule.  Serious planning work is now being done to offer a broad range of IT-as-a-service to the EMC organization.  And I think there are some useful insights for everyone here.

Full disclaimer: these slides are freshly pilfered from Sanjay Mirchandani, EMC's CIO.  Sanjay likes to give me a tough time that I steal all his material.  Sanjay, I'm not actually stealing your slides -- I'm only just liberating them.  Rest assured, I only steal from the best :-)

IDC Q2 2010 Storage Tracker -- Shifts Abound

Last night, IDC released their storage market share analysis for what happened in Q2.  Some things remained the same, other parts seem to be changing.

And if you watch this market as closely as I do, it's worth reviewing some of the more interesting bits.